Portway gets 26-plus years for child porn

This photo released by the U.S. District Court shows a homemade coffin found in Geoffrey Portway's home.

The city man whom authorities said was preparing to abduct a child and torture and kill him in a basement dungeon will spend the next 26 years in a federal prison far away from the children he sought to abuse.

While the defense for 40-year-old Geoffrey Portway argued he lived in a fantasy world and had no intention of harming any children, the government believes they stopped the inevitable.

“This was not just a fantasy situation that existed in this particular case. In fact, to the contrary,” said U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Carmen M. Ortiz. “We believed that Mr. Portway reflected the real deal and he was making preparations to kidnap a child or children, to abuse them and do worse. I think that we got there just in time.”

The former senior computer operator for BJ's Wholesale Club in Westboro did not address US District Court Judge Timothy S. Hillman before sentencing in U.S. District Court in Worcester. He was led out in handcuffs and will be housed in a federal facility.

The government had sought 327 months in prison after Mr. Portway pleaded guilty in May to possession of child pornography and solicitation to commit a crime. Judge Hillman sentenced him to 320 months. Mr. Portway, who formerly lived at 31-2 Beechmont St., will be deported to the United Kingdom, where he is a citizen, after serving his time here.

He has been approached by British authorities because he has a right to serve his sentence there, but his lawyer said there are no plans to file a motion to send Mr. Portway overseas. Judge Hillman ordered that Mr. Portway serve a lifetime of supervised release and the prison sentence must be completed here on U.S. soil.

British authorities already know Mr. Portway will head back there upon release.

“They already know that he'll be coming,” Bruce M. Foucart, special agent in charge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Office of Homeland Security Investigations in Boston.

Prosecutor Stacy Dawson Belf fought against the defense's argument that Mr. Portway created the sound-proofed dungeon for role-playing and fantasy. She said the dungeon showed his preparations to sexually abuse, torture, kill and cook a child.

“He called it a dungeon. He acknowledged it as a boy butcher basement,” she said. “Why create a child-sized coffin? That coffin was built and designed for a purpose. He can only claim fantasy because he hadn't done it yet.”

When authorities raided Mr. Portway's West Side home in July 2012, they seized thousands of images of child pornography. A door led them to a dungeon complete with a cage, butchering tools, a child-sized coffin and instruments of torture.

Defense lawyer Richard J. Sweeney claimed his client immersed himself in a fantasy world and no evidence showed he ever abused a child, or placed himself in a situation where he could access children. He said the dungeon was a “theater” and Mr. Portway would himself sit in the “storage box.”

Federal investigators testified Mr. Portway, a large man, would not fit inside the coffin.

“He lived in a fantasy world that did not involve live children,” Mr. Sweeney said.

That world was an international child pornography and exploitation network in which Mr. Portway was involved. One facet of the group involved men from Kansas who volunteered in a children's hospital to access children. Pictures of those children were shared by the men, who included Mr. Portway. The case also led authorities to a Dutch national.

The investigation into Milford resident Robert A. Diduca, who has since been convicted in the child pornography case, helped authorities unravel a network of men sharing child pornography and abusing children to produce the images. So far more than 60 people have been arrested worldwide and more than 167 children have been identified and rescued.

Mr. Portway solicited the help of a Kansas man to abduct a child, authorities said. In chats, Mr. Portway discussed a specific child who appears to have been terminally ill at a Kansas hospital where one of Mr. Portway's contacts volunteered. Some victims in the international investigation have been identified as under a year old.

Mr. Sweeney said his client was part of a market that led to the abuse of children. Horrific images of children being sexually abused, tortured and butchered were shared in this network.

“It is the sickest type of child pornography someone could have,” Mr. Sweeney said, arguing for the lesser sentence of 18 years in prison. “He's part of that, and he deserves to be punished.”

Worcester District Attorney Joseph D. Early Jr. was one of many officials inside the courtroom. His detectives were involved in the investigation.

“We're happy to see this defendant put behind bars, but extremely upset and disturbed, as is the public, by these crimes,” Mr. Early said, crediting his investigators and Worcester police. “His actions and possible future actions are as severe a threat to our community as anything we have ever seen. The images and evidence produced in court are unimaginable.”

Mr. Portway shared child pornography with others. He neatly organized the material in his computer. The ease with which the men shared child pornography was unsettling to investigators.

“This is a systemic problem that we're seeing over the Internet,” Mr. Foucart said. “Because of the Internet, because of the availability in an instant we're seeing that it's becoming a systemic problem and people think they can hide behind their computers. The fact is they can't.”